Well duh!

Economists are not a very unified lot except on some issues.  CNN Money did a poll of their panel of economists about what Congress should do about the Bush tax cuts.  By a 6:1 margin they argue that for now they should extend the cuts completely rather than targeting them to the middle class.

From my point of view there are some elements where there might be some alternative results.  For example, rather than extending the complete abolition of the "death tax" I think it might be prudent to set an exclusion amount at a level which excludes both the vast majority of Americans and also some small businesses and then set the rate considerably below the confiscatory level before Bush (55%).   But it is odd that the brilliant people in the Obama economics team should be able to get the wisdom here both political and economic.   But they do not seem to.   That is 60% of this broad group of distinguished economists think the tax cuts should simply be extended versus the 10% of think the extensions should only go to the middle class.